In the latest blow for the horse racing industry and the sport in California, Justify, winner of the Triple Crown in 2018, failed a drug test weeks before the Kentucky Derby and the test result was dismissed by the California Horse Racing Board after the colt went on to win the Triple Crown, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Under horse racing rules, Justify should have been disqualified from the Derby, making him ineligible for the Triple Crown. Justify, who already had qualified for the Derby, tested positive for scopolamine with a victory in the April 7, 2018, Santa Anita Derby. A banned substance, the drug can enhance performance and make a horse more efficient by acting as a bronchodilator to clear the airway and optimize the heart rate, Dr. Rick Sams, former head of the drug lab for the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission, told the Times.

Advertisement

He said the amount of scopolamine found in Justify - 300 nanograms per milliliter - was excessive, and suggested the drug was intended to enhance performance. "I think it has to come from intentional intervention," Sams said.

Trainer Bob Baffert was not told of the result by the board until April 26, nine days before the Kentucky Derby, and Baffert requested that a second sample be tested by an independent lab. Three days after Justify won the Kentucky Derby, that lab confirmed the results.

"There was no way that we could have come up with an investigative report prior to the Kentucky Derby," Rick Baedeker, the board's executive director, per the Times. "That's impossible. Well, that's not impossible, that would have been careless and reckless for us to tell an investigator what usually takes you two months, you have to get done in five days, eight days. We weren't going to do that."

Citing internal memos and emails, the Times' Joe Drape reported that, instead of filing a complaint and holding a hearing, the racing board did nothing until Aug. 23, two months after Justify's Belmont Stakes victory in the last leg of the Triple Crown. Baedeker presented the case to the commissioners, who decided that the test result could have come from consuming contaminated food and voted unanimously to drop the case. However, the board's medical director said in 2016 that the odds of getting a positive scopolamine test from food "is rather low."

Shortly afterward, the board changed the penalty for a failed scopolamine test from disqualification to a fine and a possible suspension.

California's racing board has come under fire this year because of the deaths of 30 racehorses at Santa Anita Park since the day after Christmas. An investigation by the Los Angeles district attorney is underway and the state legislature has held hearings on how to better regulate tracks and improve the treatment of horses.

"We take seriously the integrity of horse racing in California and are committed to implementing the highest standards of safety and accountability for all horses, jockeys and participants,'' the board said in a statement to the Times and promised a further comment Thursday. Baffert did not comment for the Times and Justify, the 13th horse to complete the Triple Crown, no longer races.